- 114: NO THEME 13with J Toledo & C Tse 113: INVISIBLE WALLSwith A Walker & D Disney 112: TREATwith T Dearborn 111: BABYwith S Deo & L Ferney 110: POP!with Z Frost & B Jessen 109: NO THEME 12with C Maling & N Rhook 108: DEDICATIONwith L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik 107: LIMINALwith B Li 106: OPENwith C Lowe & J Langdon 105: NO THEME 11with E Grills & E Stewart 104: KINwith E Shiosaki 103: AMBLEwith E Gomez and S Gory 102: GAMEwith R Green and J Maxwell 101: NO THEME 10with J Kinsella and J Leanne 100: BROWNFACE with W S Dunn 99: SINGAPOREwith J Ip and A Pang 97 & 98: PROPAGANDAwith M Breeze and S Groth 96: NO THEME IXwith M Gill and J Thayil 95: EARTHwith M Takolander 94: BAYTwith Z Hashem Beck 93: PEACHwith L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong 92: NO THEME VIIIwith C Gaskin 91: MONSTERwith N Curnow 90: AFRICAN DIASPORAwith S Umar 89: DOMESTICwith N Harkin 88: TRANSQUEERwith S Barnes and Q Eades 87: DIFFICULTwith O Schwartz & H Isemonger 86: NO THEME VIIwith L Gorton 85: PHILIPPINESwith Mookie L and S Lua 84: SUBURBIAwith L Brown and N O'Reilly 83: MATHEMATICSwith F Hile 82: LANDwith J Stuart and J Gibian 81: NEW CARIBBEANwith V Lucien 80: NO THEME VIwith J Beveridge 57.1: EKPHRASTICwith C Atherton and P Hetherington 57: CONFESSIONwith K Glastonbury 56: EXPLODE with D Disney 55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUSwith M Chakraborty and K MacCarter 55: FUTURE MACHINES with Bella Li 54: NO THEME V with F Wright and O Sakr 53.0: THE END with P Brown 52.0: TOIL with C Jenkins 51.1: UMAMI with L Davies and Lifted Brow 51.0: TRANSTASMAN with B Cassidy 50.0: NO THEME IV with J Tranter 49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH with M Hall and S Seita 49.0: OBSOLETE with T Ryan 48.1: CANADA with K MacCarter and S Rhodes 48.0: CONSTRAINT with C Wakeling 47.0: COLLABORATION with L Armand and H Lambert 46.1: MELBOURNE with M Farrell 46.0: NO THEME III with F Plunkett 45.0: SILENCE with J Owen 44.0: GONDWANALAND with D Motion 43.1: PUMPKIN with K MacCarter 43.0: MASQUE with A Vickery 42.0: NO THEME II with G Ryan 41.1: RATBAGGERY with D Hose 41.0: TRANSPACIFIC with J Rowe and M Nardone 40.1: INDONESIA with K MacCarter 40.0: INTERLOCUTOR with L Hart 39.1: GIBBERBIRD with S Gory 39.0: JACKPOT! with S Wagan Watson 38.0: SYDNEY with A Lorange 37.1: NEBRASKA with S Whalen 37.0: NO THEME! with A Wearne 36.0: ELECTRONICA with J Jones
Michael Aiken
The Secret Council of Raphael and Michael
A secret cave in the glacial wastes of gas and air stretching beyond all comprehending: a light, tiny, unwavered, the faint glow a beacon to that chiefest coven of principals, prior to the fall the greatest array of lordly wings …
Posted in 80: NO THEME VI
Tagged Michael Aiken
Michael Aiken Reviews Dave Drayton
Dave Drayton’s Haiturograms is a brief but confounding volume, available as a free PDF download and print-to-order book from Sydney-based SOd press. Like Drayton’s other work, HaiturogramS is driven by formal constraint and innovation within that constraint.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Dave Drayton, Michael Aiken
Michael Aiken Reviews Monty Reid
Composed of nine distinct sections, Canadian poet Monty Reid’s Meditatio Placentae is more like a collection of chapbooks than individual poems. Most of those nine sections have previously appeared as separate publications, and each certainly works as a discrete sequence. The whole is loosely held together by a combination of mundane subjects and a nightmare-like, alien perceptiveness; rather than building a continuous collection, the sections create a context of transition from one mode to another.
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Tagged Michael Aiken, Monty Reid
Michael Aiken Reviews Duncan Hose
The bio of Duncan Bruce Hose describes the Australian poet as coming from ‘the softslang line of the chansonnier, whose reference points range between Trefoil Island, Melbourne and Coney Island.’ In Bunratty, his third collection, that ‘softslang line’ delivers a suite of deftly composed (post)modernist folk songs, characterised by a highly idiosyncratic orthography and a preoccupation with sex and booze.
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Tagged Duncan Hose, Michael Aiken
Michael Aiken Reviews Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu is a prolific writer whose combination of occupations – poet, novelist, translator, academic – gives some context to this book’s obsessive engagement with word, language and meaning. His biographical note mentions that he came to Australia at the age of 35, and there’s a pervasive trope in Fainting with Freedom of a stranger-in-a-strange-land’s curiosity for the materiality of language and its malleability: something akin to what Kerouac once alluded to when he described his relationship to English – a language he didn’t learn until he was eight – as a tool he could very consciously manipulate as necessary for effect and meaning.
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Tagged Michael Aiken, Ouyang Yu
Oliver Shaw Reviews Michael Aiken
Reading Michael Aiken’s A Vicious Example is like walking out of the pub and wandering city streets at 4 am, half-drunk and in sub-conscious wonder. The strangeness of it all: What year is it again? Where are we? Aiken’s collection is fragmented, forming thought-voices into obscure imagery that settles and unsettles on the mind. Aiken’s voice is lethargic, hopeless. There is only one narrative to this text that I can find, which from the beginning locates us and the poems in the Australian city. In the opening poem Aiken welcomes us to ‘come and see …’ what the rest of the country looks like after colonisation’s ‘Theft by Discovery’.
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Tagged Michael Aiken, Oliver Shaw
Michael Aiken Reviews Louis Armand
The title of this book is an early manifestation of its endless intertextual referencing, as well as one example of the author's restrained penchant for relatively silly puns. It is also an understatement of the viciousness of some of this poetry.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Louis Armand, Michael Aiken
